About this season
Half-hour program on the "real-life adventure" of big business. Newsman Eric Sevareid, who served as host, described the series as neither "chamber of commerce boosterism" nor anti-establishment; rather, "an effort to report how various industrial sectors actually work."
Episodes (13)
1. Wildcatter
Aired 2 October 1981 • 28 min
Bill Brodnax (Taurus Petroleum) drills for gas in the Cajun country of southern Louisiana. Witness how drilling is planned, financed, and carried out. In the closing moments, viewers learn alongside the wildcatter and his backers whether the well does in fact strike gas.
2. The Colonel Comes to Japan
Aired 9 October 1981 • 28 min
Loy Weston, the American chairman of Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan, presides over 324 stores. Witness the setting up of a new outlet in northeast Tokyo.
3. Gulliver's New Travels
Aired 16 October 1981 • 28 min
Examining the future of AT&T as its telephone monopoly ends and a new era of tooth-and-nail competition begins.
4. Fast Horse in a Bull Market
Aired 23 October 1981 • 29 min
The bizarre preparations for an auction where millionaires bid for race horses. (Tom Gentry Farms)
5. Bankrupt
Aired 30 October 1981 • 28 min
Inforex was a $70 million-a-year computer firm that rode the high-tech wave to prosperity in the early 1970s. Founded in 1968, it had burst on the scene with the IKE, a television-like data entry machine that had rendered the old punchcard systems obsolete. But the company had never been able to come up with a profitable second product.
6. The Making of a Package Deal
Aired 6 November 1981 • 27 min
Entertainment industries, searching for safer products with bigger returns on investments, have joined forces to create 'properties'. Witness one such property progress from inception to spinoff.
7. Dogfight Over New York
Aired 13 November 1981 • 28 min
One of the new airlines challenging the giants of the industry in the wake of deregulation, New York Air is followed from start-up to inaugural flight.
8. Catfish Fever
Aired 20 November 1981 • 29 min
Unhappy with the unpredictability of cotton prices, many Mississippi Delta farmers are converting their hardscrabble land to catfish "farms" of 80-acre ponds.
9. Not by Jeans Alone
Aired 27 November 1981 • 29 min
Levi-Strauss attempt to market a moderately priced, mass produced men's suit.
10. The Kyocera Experiment
Aired 4 December 1981 • 28 min
The San Diego subsidiary of Japan's fastest-growing company -- Kyoto Ceramic -- illustrates Japan's management techniques.
11. One Man's Multinational
Aired 11 December 1981 • 28 min
Tom Bata, chairman of Bata Shoe, visits his company's manufacturing plants in Chile, Upper Volta, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and Kenya.
12. The Jet Set: Boeing vs. the World
Aired 18 December 1981 • 28 min
How market leader Boeing stays on top of the world aircraft business.
13. Start-Up
Aired 25 December 1981 • 28 min
John DeLorean, a former executive at General Motors, has used his fortune, reputation, expertise, and connections to produce a new sports car.